


For Sacrifice

by talkingtothesky



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Season/Series 04, Spoilers, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-08
Updated: 2015-01-26
Packaged: 2018-03-06 18:27:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3144158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talkingtothesky/pseuds/talkingtothesky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It should have been you." Root said. </p><p>John nodded, accepting that without question. That only made her angrier. She wanted him to attempt to justify his existence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Reese was sitting shirtless on the edge of a table in the kitchen of an apartment none of them had ever been to or even known existed before. While driving their third stolen car in thirty minutes, Harold had flatly told them he'd arranged this emergency safe house using some of their meagre stolen cash, done it so secretively (for it obviously had to be within the shadow map) that not even the Machine had known about it until now. The AI had immediately begun researching, dug up a string of previous owners for this residence, but there was no paperwork for the current occupiers. Bear was with Leon. The subway remained undetected. It was all meaningless information in her ear, but Root couldn't switch it off, couldn't tear the implant out of her head. The Machine had been silent for months and now just when she wanted to be rid of Her...Root doubted she'd ever again be able to breathe properly now that half of herself had been ripped away. Somehow, she was still standing, arms folded in the middle of the floor. Itching for a gun in her hands.

 

"It should have been you." Root said.

 

John nodded, accepting that without question. That only made her angrier. She wanted him to attempt to justify his existence. She wanted to know why The Machine had sacrificed Shaw and not anyone else. Harold was right all along, the Machine didn't care.

 

"The Machine ran simulations before giving us the final plan. You died. I died. Harold died."

 

She saw that hit home. Good. Reese's face went completely blank, even paler than it had been getting from blood loss. "How did Harold die?" He rasped, obviously afraid to ask but unable to help himself.

 

"He was shot in the heart. You weren't there to save him. You were too busy getting yourself blown up, satisfying your selfish little death wish." That wasn't true at all. She was conflating two separate scenarios. Root wanted to hurt him. "If you hadn't gotten yourself shot, you wouldn't have slowed us down as we were escaping and she'd be alive. Even shot, you should've crawled out of the lift and pressed that button yourself before she had a chance to."

 

"Listen to me. We don't know for sure that she's dead."

 

She laughed. "Don't. Don't do that." _Don't give me hope right now. Hope will finally kill me._

 

John was staring at her as though he'd never quite seen her clearly before. But she didn't want his understanding, she wanted his guilt, wanted to purge herself of her own and lay it all on him.

 

"I won't apologise for protecting Harold." He said, firmly. "If I hadn't, we'd be looking at two dead, him and me. That'd leave you, Shaw and Fusco against Samaritan. Are those better odds?"

 

" _Yes_ , they'd be better." She was flying in the face of logic, but that didn't matter. Nothing mattered except Shaw.

 

"Hush, please. Arguing won't do either of you any good." Harold was back. Root couldn't look him in the eye. She'd just wished him dead, and he'd probably heard her, and it was all his fault in the first place that she'd found a family to lose. She had been better off living her life alone, performing random acts of violence for the highest bidder.

 

Finch began setting out medical supplies across the table, which had already been sterilized. "We need to rest and regroup. Tomorrow, we start again."

 

He was so _calm_. She was going to boil over with rage if she looked at either of them any longer. She went into one of the two bedrooms and slammed the door behind her.

 


	2. Chapter 2

"I'll be fine, Harold." John was quietly trying to reassure him again, and it was more convincing this time, since he hadn't slumped to the floor in his arms mere seconds ago, now that his eyes weren't rolling back in his head as he spoke.

 

In return, Harold offered him another forced, sad smile, because it was all he could manage. He had to concentrate on getting this bullet out, on keeping his hands steady. He'd prefer not to be doing this himself, but there were no hospitals or private clinics or even morgues within the limits of the shadow map, and he'd learned enough from Sameen to - he cut off that train of thought abruptly. John was relying on him. He pulled on a pair of nitrile rubber gloves and picked up the tweezers.

 

As gently as he could, he placed thumb and forefinger either side of the small wound in John's back, locating the frayed edges of black and white cloth which had been dragged in along with the bullet. The metal was lodged very close to the surface. He'd been extraordinarily lucky; an inch to the left could have punctured a lung, half an inch to the right might have meant spinal problems. A rib had prevented the bullet from going through and through into Finch, which would have somewhat defeated the purpose of John's self-sacrifice. The bullet had also remained in one piece, as far as he could tell.

 

Harold took a brief, bracing breath in through his nose and said "Okay, Mr. Reese..." to warn him. John gripped the edge of the table tighter but otherwise did not react. Harold got the tweezers around the end of the bullet and very gently tugged, careful to simultaneously extract the shirt and jacket threads which could cause infection if left in.

 

It made an unpleasant noise as it came out - the part of Harold that was squeamish wanted to gag, but he suppressed it. The bleeding began again as soon as he'd dropped the bullet into the silver tray; he quickly applied pressure using sterile gauze pads and waited nervously for the red circle to cease spreading.

 

"That rib is most likely cracked," he told John, even though he already knew that, and then added, flippantly, "You could just let me get shot for once."

 

John flinched under his hands. "Finch."

 

"You do it all the time and you're _fine_. Or so you tell me."

 

Finch had been counting the ever increasing number of scars on Reese's body because of him for years now. It was hardly fair for Reese to clock up twelve separate wounds on his centre mass alone, while Finch had only sustained one minor shoulder hit in the entire course of their work.

 

"It's my job, Harold." When Finch huffed and tried to shake his head, John reached over and grasped Harold's elbow. "Root told me what happened in the first strategy the Machine tried. I'm never going to take that chance."

 

Finch stared at John's hand for a moment, before returning his attention to the gauze. The bleeding had stopped, thankfully - no cause for alarm. He cleaned the wound with warm water, applied antiseptic and then a large square bandage, carefully taping the edges down far enough away from the impact site to minimize pain. Root had told him too, in the car on the way here after they'd dropped Fusco off, with John drifting in and out of lucidity on the backseat. Grief was - understandably - causing her to revert to how she had been at the very beginning of their association, vicious and bitter. "I think I'm offended that the Machine supposes I will die within seconds, while in reality you endure bleeding out for hours with no long-term effects -"

 

"I've been shot loads of times. I know how to avoid going into shock."

 

"Yes, that's a great comfort. You've had _practice_ therefore it's better. For heaven's sake. I don't like to see you in pain."

 

"I much prefer it to the alternative. I'll do the same again and again and you know that, so don't waste your breath trying to convince me to stop."

 

They'd both become agitated by this pointless conversation. Harold whined involuntarily and pressed his lips to John's shoulder. "I'm sorry, John. I should be thanking you."

 

John leant into the touch and agreed "Yeah, you should," with a teasing quirk of his mouth. Harold kissed him properly then, drawing solace from the familiar warmth of him, grateful beyond words. But suddenly the thought of kissing reminded him of the elevator - he drew back.

 

"Oh." All the despair he'd been holding at bay rushed in with the force of a tidal wave. "What are we going to do without Miss Shaw?"


	3. Chapter 3

Root lay in the dark for hours. She wondered why she hadn't left yet, gone her own way, like she used to. The 'team' wasn't a team without Shaw in it.

 

"Give me her voice again." Root murmured, and The Machine hesitated momentarily before She provided another audio clip.

 

_"There are things I care about here."_

 

Everyone replayed things in their memories. Root could go one better. She could actually rewind the clock and relive it all, through code and cameras.

 

Root knew exactly how much patience Shaw would have for her behaviour at the moment. She was being _Eeyore_ again, instead of working productively on the mission.

 

The mission could go to hell. Greer, Martine, Lambert, everyone. Root was going to take them all apart piece by piece and she was going to enjoy it, but right now she just wanted to fall asleep with Sameen's voice in her ear. If she tried hard enough maybe she could recapture the feel of holding Shaw in her arms, the scent of her hair, the curve of her smile.

 

 _Medical supplies. 1 o' clock._ The Machine broke into her thoughts.

 

"Go away."

 

_Analogue Interface status: health declining._

 

"What do you care?" She snapped, and then almost immediately tried bargaining instead. "Give her back to me and I'll perk right up."

 

There was a minuscule delay before the response, and in that fraction of time Root's heart clenched at the possibility of her prayer being answered.

 

 _Medical supplies. 1 o' clock._ The Machine only repeated.

 

Root let out her held breath with a shuddery sigh, full of pain and frustration. It was only as her stomach twinged with the sudden movement that she remembered the wound and realised what was being asked of her. The blood she'd collected on her fingers just before making that farewell call. She'd quickly wiped it away on her shirt before Shaw could see.

 

Slowly, she dragged herself to the edge of the bed and sat up, then stood. Her legs were weak, but her eyes were hyper alert in the darkness as she made her way out of the room and into the kitchen. Harold and John had gone to bed hours ago. As she passed their closed door she had to bite her lip against a furious wave of jealousy: they still had each other.

 

Helping herself silently to antiseptic wipes and gauze, Root went back into her room and closed her tired eyes before turning the light on, giving herself time to adjust. Her skin was raw as she peeled back her clothing, crusty with dried blood. She did a perfunctory job of cleaning and patching herself up - just because Reese always made a big babyish fuss out of his injuries didn't mean she had to.

 

When Root's arm had been in a sling Shaw had laughed at her clumsy attempts to open things and rolled her eyes before eventually helping. _"I love it when you play doctor."_ She thought, didn't need the aid of recorded footage to feel the ghost of Sameen's fingers in her hair, plucking at the neckline of her top.

 

The Machine was determined to interrupt.

 

 _254 Wendell Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts_.


	4. Chapter 4

"I don't think she's dead." John told them, early next morning.

 

When he'd suggested it last night, Root had laughed at him. Finch had given him a sympathetic pat and said very gently 'John...you didn't see...' Fair point, he'd been halfway to unconscious at the time, stuck on his back on the floor of the elevator, but he still knew by ear the difference between the resonance of shots fired from Martine's handgun and that from a much larger weapon. From much further away. Impacting a wall, not a person. This suspicion, combined with the accumulation of hard-earned experience that things in their line of work were never as simple as it first appeared.

 

"I agree. " Root announced, before John could explain any of that out loud. "Control has a daughter. And last night The Machine sent me the address where she lives."

 

Charged silence. Finch stared at her. "We do _not_ involve children in this, Miss Groves."

 

"Of course not. But a few empty threats won't do any harm."

 

John frowned and Finch went very still at the return to malicious intent in Root's voice, even though it wasn't directed at them. They hadn't heard that sickly-sweet, menacing tone in a while. That aside, John was prepared to employ any means necessary to find Shaw. He and Root were very much alike in some ways, he was starting to realise. Her fury, they could use.

 

"How would Control know where Shaw is?" He asked Root.

 

"She works with Samaritan. Their operations run hand in hand."

 

"She was...quite keen to have Sameen terminated during the business with Arthur." Finch mused, quietly.

 

"That doesn't mean she'd vote to kill her _this_ time." Root argued. "She was a good agent, and Control lost her. I bet she'd be first in line to recruit Shaw back onto her side. Prove she'd finally won."

 

"Miss Shaw would never -"

 

"With a gun pointed between her eyes? Shaw has enough good sense to play along, under those circumstances." Root's voice cracked ever so slightly on Shaw's name.

 

"You told me she was defending Samaritan acting the way it did in the case of that Farrow guy." John reminded Harold. "Maybe out of all of us, she's the one who can understand the other side."

 

Finch held up his hands. "This is all speculation."

 

"Then we need some facts." Root went over to the laptop and began to hack into the stock exchange.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! I had computer trouble. Some of this was written before 4x12 aired, and some of it has been tweaked afterwards. I'll continue to fill in some missing scenes from 4x12.


End file.
